Four Prisoners Freed From Guantánamo: Three in Albania, One in Spain
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By Andy Worthington

Common Dreams

Saturday, Feb 27, 2010

On Wednesday, four prisoners were released from Guantánamo: an
Egyptian, a Libyan and a Tunisian arrived in Albania, and a Palestinian
arrived in Spain. All four had been cleared by military review boards
at Guantánamo under the Bush administration, and had then been cleared
by President Obama’s interagency Task Force, but, like dozens of
prisoners in Guantánamo, they could not be repatriated because of fears
that they would be tortured if returned to their home countries or
subjected to other ill-treatment, or because they were effectively
stateless.

The Spanish government, which declared last week
that it would take up to five cleared prisoners from Guantánamo,
announced that the first of these men arrived in Spain on Wednesday.
The Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba told reporters
that the man is Palestinian, but would not give his name, citing
privacy concerns. According to the press agency dpa,
Rubalcaba explained that he “would get a residence permit, the
possibility to work and freedom of movement in Spain, though Guantánamo
prisoners taken by European countries could not leave those countries.”
He added that Spain would only accept prisoners “with no criminal
charges in the European Union, the United States or their countries of
origin.”

As well as accepting the Palestinian, the newspaper Periódico
reported that other prisoners, “believed to include a Syrian and a
Yemeni citizen,” were “expected to arrive in Spain shortly,” adding
that they will be “placed in different locations under the care of
NGOs,” and will also be “placed under surveillance not only to protect
the Spanish public, but also to protect the individuals from al-Qaeda
reprisals over their possible revelations to US intelligence services.”

Announcing the arrival of three prisoners in Albania, the Ministry
of the Interior stated, “This transfer is a result of the engagement of
the Albanian government in backing the Obama administration’s policy to
close the detention center in Guantánamo and transfer prisoners to
friendly and safe third countries.” In a press release,
the US Justice Department identified the three men as: Abdul Rauf Omar
Mohammad Abu al-Qusin, a Libyan; Sharif Fati Ali al-Mishad, an
Egyptian; and Saleh bin Hadi Asasi, a Tunisian.

Their stories, like those of the majority of the 584 prisoners
released from Guantánamo, demonstrate, yet again, that, behind the
blustering rhetoric of former Vice President Dick Cheney and his
swarming acolytes, the majority of the men held at Guantánamo had no
involvement with terrorism, and that a disturbingly large number of
them were innocent men seized by mistake.

Of the three men rehoused in Albania, for example, one was a
businessman, living in Europe, who had traveled to Afghanistan to
provide humanitarian aid, one was a veteran of Afghanistan’s war
against the Soviet Union, who had married an Afghan woman, and was
seized in a house in Lahore, Pakistan, far from the battlefields of
Afghanistan, and the other man, as was common in 2001, before the 9/11
attacks, had been persuaded to travel to Afghanistan to help the
Taliban defeat their enemies, the Northern Alliance, in a long-running
civil war that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or international
terrorism, and had not raised a finger against US forces.

Sherif El-Mashad: An Egyptian businessman and humanitarian aid worker

Sharif al-Mishad (also identified as Sherif El-Mashad) is an
Egyptian, born in 1976. A talented athlete and carpenter in his youth,
he enrolled in a technical school to learn woodworking, cabinetmaking,
painting, tiling, plumbing and roofing, and, after graduating, spent
three years working in Sinai at some of Egypt’s largest beach resorts.
There, he began to learn Italian from the tourists, and in 1997, after
his father died, decided to travel to Italy, to stay with his uncle, an
Italian citizen who lived in Como, in the hope of finding better paid
work to provide for the family.

Once he had secured a work permit, he worked in a restaurant and a
bar, but soon found that his skills as a craftsman would pay better.
After working as an apprentice with two painting companies, he obtained
a license from the Chamber of Commerce in Como to work as an
independent contractor, and set up his own company, “Sherif El-Mashad,”
running the business out of his home.

In the spring of 2001, he met a wealthy Kuwaiti businessman, who encouraged him to travel to Afghanistan to do charity work. As he explained to his lawyers,
at the London-based legal action charity Reprieve, he saw this as “a
dual opportunity,” allowing him not only to network with a
well-connected businessman, but also to help those less fortunate than
himself by distributing humanitarian aid — food, clothes, and blankets.
Providing an analogy to his lawyers, he explained that the plan was
akin to “organizing a charity gala with a prospective business partner.”

As a result of this meeting, El-Mashad booked a round-trip ticket,
intending to stay in Afghanistan for a couple of months, before
returning home to work. It was obvious that he had no intention of
staying any longer, because, as his lawyers, explained, two days before
he left Italy in July 2001, he had billed a customer almost €15,000 for
painting services to be collected on his return.

His mother, who is the deputy principal of a school in Egypt, explained in 2006
how she had advised her son against traveling to Afghanistan. “I never
wanted him to go on that trip”, she said, “because I knew that the
region was unstable and so many events were taking place there, but he
was stubborn. He was very kind and grateful to his family, though.” A
week after his arrival, according to his mother, “he called his uncle,
who lives in Italy, and told him that he arrived and asked him to
reassure me.”

After that, he effectively disappeared off the face of the earth,
until his uncle called to say that he had received a postcard from
Guantánamo (via the International Committee of the Red Cross), in which
he wrote that “he had been visiting a friend in Afghanistan and
subsequently enlisted in a ‘rescue organization’ that offered
‘humanitarian aid to the Afghani people.’” Although he ended up staying
in Afghanistan for longer than he intended, helping his friend, who, as
he explained in Guantánamo, “passed out donations to help the Afghani
people,” they remained safe in Kabul until November 2001, when, with
the Northern Alliance approaching, and rumors spreading that Arabs were
no longer safe, they set off for the Iranian border, intending to
return home. As he also explained, “I had a valid visa to Iran and a
return ticket with an Iranian airline.” However, when they discovered
that the border crossing was closed, they realized that they would have
to leave via Pakistan, but were detained by Pakistani soldiers after
crossing the border and arriving in a small village. El-Mashad then
spent three weeks in a Pakistani prison in Peshawar, and was then flown
to the US prison at Kandahar airport, where he spent several more
months before being transferred to Guantánamo.

There seems to be no reason to dispute this story, and El-Mashad
clearly explained it at length to his interrogators in Guantánamo,
telling them how he traveled to Kabul, how he met up with the Kuwaiti
businessman, how he “heard of the attacks in America while listening to
the radio,” how he and “all who were present with him were sorrowful
and none of them were happy,” and how he fled from Afghanistan and was
seized.

One of these allegations was made by a prisoner who was rescued by
US forces from a prison in Afghanistan, and then transported to
Guantánamo, even though he had been imprisoned as a spy by al-Qaeda and
had been subjected to horrendous torture. This prisoner claimed that,
in early 2000, El-Mashad “participated in torturing him through
beatings and electric shocks”, even though, as El-Mashad pointed out,
he was in Italy in early 2000 and had the documents to prove it.

He also told his lawyers that, in the early days of his
imprisonment, “I was first accused of aiding the Arabs in Bosnia. Then
they changed the accusation that I was there just for training. In both
cases, it’s impossible that I was in Bosnia at the time of the war in
1991, simply because at that date I was 14 years old! From 1991-1997
(the duration of the Bosnian war) I was studying at my school and I
never left my country to anywhere. I have the proving documents.” He
also explained that another set of false allegations came about because
the US authorities mistook him for a significant figure in al-Qaeda,
which led to a number of other false allegations, including claims that
he trained recruits in urban warfare at a military training camp.
Another false allegation, made by an unnamed “source”, was that he sold
videotapes of the bombing, in 2000, of the USS Cole.

“Throughout my life, I was never involved in any banned or illegal
activities by any means,” he told Cori Crider of Reprieve in August
2008, during his first visit with a lawyer from the legal action
charity, adding, “I don’t have any file with any police office or any
bad record with any authority.” He also explained that Italian agents
had visited him in Guantánamo and had confirmed that there was no case
against him. “They told me they knew I was innocent and they would ask
the United States to release me,” he said, adding, “My case is very
clear. I have physical evidence to defend myself against these charges.”

Abdul Ra’ouf al-Qassim: A Libyan seized in Pakistan

Abdul Rauf al-Qusin (also identified as Abdul Ra’ouf al-Qassim, and
named in court documents as Abu Abdul Raouf Zalita) is a Libyan, born
in 1965, who was cleared for release from Guantánamo in 2006. A soldier
in the Libyan army from 1983 to 1989, he had then deserted, traveling
to Afghanistan “to immigrate and to start a new life,” as he explained to his military review board
in Guantánamo in May 2005. After fighting with the mujahideen until
1993, when the last remnants of the Soviet regime fell, he “traveled
back and forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan” — at one point
studying at university in Quetta — and also met and married an Afghan
woman, Rahima, with whom he had a daughter, Khiria, who has spent the
whole of her young life without her father.

Al-Qassim was captured in Lahore in May 2002, at the house of a
Pakistani, after escaping from war-torn Afghanistan with his pregnant
wife, but although it was clear that he had not taken up arms against
the Americans, it was far less clear that he would not be regarded as a
threat by the government of his home country. At his review in 2005, he
explained (via a military officer assigned to him instead of a lawyer)
that he had received military training at two Libyan camps in
Afghanistan, but only because he was living there, and also admitted
that he had joined the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group — exiled opponents
of the Gaddafi regime — but only “out of desperation — he was broke,
had no place to go, was hungry, unemployed and had no way to support
himself.” He added that his family “did not receive monetary support
from the [LIFG], but he received food, shelter and an allowance for
clothes.” He also agreed with previous statements he had made: that he
“did not believe in violence,” and that he “angrily defined
[al-Qaeda’s] leadership and members as ‘savages’ who twist the meaning
of Islam, thereby hurting all Muslims.”

Although al-Qassim stated that a Libyan delegation, who visited
Guantánamo in 2004 (and were actually flown there by the CIA), told him
that they “knew he was with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group only by
name,” that he was “obligated to be with them,” and that they would
“take care of him,” he repeatedly told his Assisting Military Officer
that he was “afraid of returning to Libya.” His AMO reported, “He said
he does not want to go to Libya because he feels he cannot trust them
and because they put people in prison for no reason. He said he feels
that if he returns to Libya, even after being released by the United
States, he would be sent back to prison.” Such was his concern that the
Presiding Officer noted, “For the record, make sure that we put in our
report that the Detainee is afraid of returning to Libya.”

In spite of this, the US government sought to repatriate al-Qassim, and his lawyers — at the Center for Constitutional Rights — fought a legal battle for over three years to prevent his forcible return. In a court filing in December 2008 (PDF), they noted his ongoing legal limbo:

The Government has cleared him for transfer from
Guantánamo, and has twice attempted to repatriate him to Libya, the
country from which he fled to Afghanistan more than a decade ago in
order to avoid religious persecution. Petitioner has a credible fear
that he will be subject to imprisonment, torture and possible summary
execution if he is forcibly returned to Libya, and he has resisted all
attempts to repatriate him to that country. He remains detained in Camp
6, an isolation facility, more than six years after his detention and
nearly two years after the Government’s first notice of intent to
transfer him out of Guantánamo.

Saleh Sassi: An insignificant adventurer

The third man released in Albania, Saleh bin Hadi Asasi (more
commonly known as Saleh Sassi, and also identified in Guantánamo as
Sayf bin Abdallah) is a Tunisian, born in 1973, who, like the two men
described above, was cleared for release by a military review board
under the Bush administration, and by President Obama’s Task Force.

A welder and a skilled laborer, he moved to Italy in 1998, hoping to
find work and a better life, and settled in Turin, where he secured a
work permit and found employment in the construction industry.
Apparently persuaded to travel to Afghanistan during a vacation from
work, he reportedly spent some time at a mountain outpost north of
Kabul, and was later wounded when a truck he was traveling in was shot
at. Hospitalized, first in Kabul, and then in Khost, he was transported
to the Pakistani border, where he was seized by the Pakistani
authorities.

In Guantánamo, as his lawyers at Reprieve noted,
he was often held “in brutal conditions.” The vast majority of his
imprisonment was spent in isolation, which caused him to suffer
clinical depression. In discussions with his lawyers, he explained that
his imprisonment was “a long and unending nightmare.” He was also
visited by teams of foreign interrogators — both Italian and Tunisian.
In late 2002, Tunisian agents came to Guantánamo and left no doubt
about what awaited him if he were to be returned to Tunisia, which
included “water torture in the barrel.”

What now, and what next?

With the release of these four men, 188 prisoners remain in
Guantánamo, but while the Albanian and Spanish governments are to be
congratulated for offering homes for men who would otherwise rot in
Guantánamo for the rest of their lives, the Italian government, which
is only interested in taking prisoners who can be put on trial in Italy
(as demonstrated with the transfer of two Tunisians
in December) ought to be ashamed that it did not accept Sherif
El-Mashad, who was so clearly seized by mistake, and who, with family
in Italy and viable skills that he could use once more, has,
essentially, been betrayed by the country which he once called home.

Above all, though, the greatest shame must settle on the United States, which still refuses to accept its own responsibility
to provide new homes for cleared prisoners who cannot be repatriated.
The exact number of prisoners in this category is difficult to
establish, because the Obama administration has not provided details of
the nationalities of these prisoners (who now number 106). When the
Task Force announced its final decisions
about the prisoners last month, it was reported that around 60 of the
106 are Yemenis. These men will not be released until the Obama
administration finds some spine, having capitulated to fearmongering about Yemen after the failed plane bomb at Christmas, and suspending all further releases to Yemen. Back in October, it was reported that three others are Saudis (who, in theory, could be returned tomorrow), which means that around 42 of the cleared prisoners are awaiting new homes.

Two of these, who have been offered a new home in Switzerland, are amongst the remaining seven Uighurs, another is an Uzbek who has been offered a new home in Latvia,
and three others (plus one of the Yemenis) are, as mentioned above,
expected to arrive in Spain shortly. However, that still leaves 36 men
waiting for new homes, and it seems probable that the countries of
Europe, which, before Wednesday, had taken 12 cleared prisoners (with Bermuda and Palau
also taking another ten of the Uighurs), will run out of largesse
before all 36 are rehoused, leaving the US government — and its people
— with a stark choice: hold them forever, or, as was planned last April (before Obama scuppered the proposal), bring some of them to live in the United States.

This is not only the right thing to do; it will also demonstrate to
the American people — and to its surplus of hysterical pundits and
politicians — that not everyone who was held at Guantánamo was a
terrorist, bent on the destruction of the United States. Why is it, I
wonder, that Europeans — in Albania, Belgium, France, Hungary, Ireland, Portugal, Slovakia,
Spain and Switzerland — can understand that between 90 and 95 percent
of the men held at Guantánamo had no connection to terrorism, and that
many of these men are still imprisoned, awaiting an end to their long
and lawless ordeal, but Americans cannot?

Andy Worthington is a journalist and historian, based in London. He is the author of The Guantánamo Files,
the first book to tell the stories of all the detainees in America's
illegal prison. For more information, visit his blog here.

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